


You're something I've been dyin' for

by CoeurDeFaux



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Crying, Guilt, I'm Sorry, Kissing, M/M, Mental Anguish, Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoeurDeFaux/pseuds/CoeurDeFaux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Asset dove into that lake, water surrounding his form and reminding him so much of years trapped in that chest, sounds echoed and far away and hope a thing to be left dead. He dove, metal fingers itching, not for a gun or knife, not for things he couldn't hold or understand, but for those eyes. Eyes that took him to a thousand life times, made his insides bubble and fragments start falling into place and yet fading from existence entirely. Laughs and scraped knuckles in dirtied alley ways, lean stomachs but full hearts, death visiting wherever you went but happiness watered down to a boy who wasn't suppose to survive the night.</p><p>For Bucky, those eyes have always held everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're something I've been dyin' for

**Author's Note:**

> Another sleepless night, another nonsense drabble.
> 
> Forgive me, all mistakes are mine.
> 
> Hope you like.

He's staring.

He's staring, feels those eyes watching him with an intensity that unnerves him. It's fear in the most foreign way, of warmth and sweetness after a lifetime of cold. He knows those eyes will shake him, drag feelings, colorful and horrible, from within him. Memories smelling of a sweltering night and hacking coughs as the accompaniment, or teeth rattling cold with wisps the color of the sun tickling his nose and making his heart burn.

Those damn eyes.

Code crumbles around his still form, though silent when it meets the floor, reflecting only years of nightmares and screams back into the air. He is poison, he thinks. The truest kind, perhaps, to ever grace this world with all the finesse and balance of a dancer whose partner is death itself. Weapons are meant to stay active, to be used whenever the need arises and put away just as quickly.

But when those eyes set upon him, like a sniper readying for a shot, instead of ducking away, finding cover and returning fire, he goes _boneless_. His heart skitters though his body lays quiet, showing no turmoil, the perfect facade practiced and maintained for decades. His lips tingle, as if freshly kissed by a lover who'll be the one spilling his blood tonight, bleeding him dry and him loving every minute of the tidal wave of emotions that flow and ebb through him.

Feeling.

It's new again, slowly a custom he is growing into and craving like a starving animal, but unable to properly communicate his need for it. It's maddening, years of ice and suddenly pieces click together which were once hung like bodies at the gallows, useless and rotting, stolen and a sign to any developing humanity that there was no hope for recovery. Once a machine, _always_ a machine.

But they were wrong.

James Buchanan Barnes, once dragged and split open, kept awake only to watch his organs torn from him, claimed by spectacles radiating manic glee and the ever growing shadows who grinned wickedly at his transformation, has managed to regain his heart.

It's a tattered thing, soaked and shaded with blood that cried and begged to be spared, but he had been locked away. Put in a glass chest, locked with a key made from leather chairs and mind frying heat, and left to watch the atrocities he would commit. Hands soiled and not his own but still feeling the vague sensation of suffocating the victims, taking their last breaths and unable to stop it. Machines don't _stop_ , they continue, mission guiding them for an eternity until rust takes them apart and leaves them as a metal carcass to be forgotten by the sands of time.

But he was awoken.

How?

Why?

He didn't know, but that was a lie. He knew exactly how, the trigger bursting into his cage and setting the whole complex ablaze, hot metal and thousands of bullets raining from the sky like a gift from above.

All it took was his name, whispered in that voice, those eyes, _those fucking eyes_ , connecting with his own.

What comes next is blurred, more killing, that's without a doubt, but a growing storm that kept turning and evolving until coming to ahead with a body falling from his hand.

Falling, hand extended, fingers screaming for him to move, heart ripping at his bones and frothing, howling for those eyes to come back.

So he dove.

An Asset dove into that lake, water surrounding his form and reminding him so much of years trapped in that chest, sounds echoed and far away and hope a thing to be left dead. He dove, metal fingers itching, not for a gun or knife, not for things he couldn't hold or understand, but for those eyes. Eyes that took him to a thousand life times, made his insides bubble and fragments start falling into place and yet fading from existence entirely. Laughs and scraped knuckles in dirtied alley ways, lean stomachs but full hearts, death visiting wherever you went but happiness watered down to a boy who wasn't suppose to survive the night.

For Bucky, those eyes have always held everything.

James Buchanan Barnes pulled Steve Rogers out of the water, watched with an unnatural silence he could never emulate in his youth for a sign of life. A breath was expelled, water dripping from pale pink lips, face battered and broken, by Bucky's _own hands_.

He disappeared after that.

The guilt came first. An all consuming entity that made friends with any weapon in sight, reflecting sweet nothings in exchange for his life. Shadows came to life, shaped in the form of women, children, men, and they all scrambled for him. Wanted to drag him to the depths of hell and at the time, he didn't argue. Bucky drowned in those sins, sustained off them instead of food, ignored the sad groans of sleep that his body needed in exchange for more cuts to his skin. More penance. More punishment for crimes he can never be washed of.

His body healed fast but Bucky was faster.

He marred his body in fits of insanity, tears streaming down his face, another stolen sensation that he'd lost, screaming his terror, his anger. He ripped and teared, cried out his pleas for forgiveness and weeped for what was taken from him. The monster he'd been morphed into, that looked back at him in the comfort of night, grinning, _pleased_.

He didn't know why he didn't end it.

Bucky had tried only once, with shattered memories and ghosts weaving through his mind, body bleeding and scabbed over, trembling in fear of the next cut or snap, he decided that this was his end.

The pistol practically _purred_ in his hand, he swears, pressed sweetly under his jaw and fitting like a glove. His hands hadn't faltered, his mind was a sea of chaotic creatures and floating debris that served as his lost past, heart crying and crying for it's release from this endless pain.

He'd answer it.

But then the door was opened.

It opened quietly, with an insignificant hush across the floor, air flowing in through the entrance, as if racing to his side. He sat, still as a dead man, and locked eyes with those that had haunted his fervent dreams, tinged his especially torturous nightmares and made his skin crawl at every waking moment. They would always pale when he took another lighter to his skin, would tear up when faced with another scar on his body, shine with a calling that went unheard because _no_ , he would never go back, _he can't_. They visited every night, echoing their owner's wishes despite the man in question scrambling in another country, searching for him, wanting to hold him, he knew, just by the way the other man's fingers would twitch slightly, jaw working this way and that.

Those eyes were here now, in the flesh, by a chance of fate? Perhaps, however Bucky had long stopped believing in destiny and it's aliases after he woke up from being an assassin for the very people he despised most, having been turned into an oversized tool, only knowing and living for the kill, to complete the missions given.

The body freezes when faced with Bucky's position, eyes going impossibly wider, doe eyed, long lashes fanned out beautifully and complementing the blatant horror coloring those irises. He watches them closely, pistol still whispering under his jaw like a jealous lover but his hand doesn't move. Bucky watches, punishes himself further than he ever has, watching those eyes break apart, an open window to the heart, enhanced and strong now, that screams.

Though it screams, it tumbles out like a whisper but shakes like a broken home.

"Buck..y...?"

The voice, deep and coiling around his throat, pulling at an invisible collar in need, fades as his name leaves it. It obliterates his own heart, wipes out his mind and leaves everything blank and waiting, waiting for those eyes to..to...

The man drops to his knees, face not shifting but eyes watering, rolling tears like a river, traveling down those cheekbones and slipping down that throat that always deserved the most heated kisses. The man hasn't noticed his legs failing him, shows no acknowledgement, only whispers, a rapidly trembling hand reaching out.

"You, _you_ , please, no. _No_ ," His eyes blurr further, a sob morphed into a desperate scream tears across the room and _that_ , that shakes Bucky's hand just so.

A mixture of incomprehensible sobs shake from that barrel of a chest, the body of a god brought to it's knees by a demon trying to do the world a favor by erasing its existence. Bucky needs to look away, those eyes will be his _salvation_ , he can't look at them.

But he _can't_ look away.

"Not again, Buck." Steve Rogers whispers, the hand not held out grasping at air, comes to grip over his heart, twists and pulls as if wanting to gouge out the organ responsible for his suffering. His eyes glaze, blue seas paling and growing listless as he shuffles a knee forward. "I can't, no, God no."

The quiet is heavy, air thick with frightening thoughts and pleading souls. The sun is beginning to kiss the world goodbye, if only for the night.

That's when it happens.

The world shifts and stars must align, because light streams in through the broken window, slips past bodies stacked in a neat pile, slithers over knocked over furniture and blood splatters. It races over a cracked mirror that showed memories yellowed, but containing feelings that chafed and tore at Bucky's skin. The sun slips into this house, random and unassuming, curves just slightly and shines on that kneeled soldier.

Time freezes, his hair like dimming gold, caught and flicked by a stray breeze. His body, massive and strong, folds in and visibly collapses, as if sentenced to hang. Both his hands fall, fingers that should be covered in graphite, knuckles that should be scraped from fights fought for the sake of good, palms broad and capable, drop to the floor as if chained to the ground. His head bows, face a mess, red and blotched with emotion gushing from every pore, agony gasped and sobbed over in a hushed voice.

Then those eyes look up, an open door to tracks rattling and echoing off a mountain top, snow whipped into a flurry by humanity's blind rush forward, a scream belonging to a lost life resonating within the four walls.

Steve speaks, slow, defeated, mourning, pleading, begging, wishing, and washed with an agony he doesn't deserve.

"I can't watch you fall again."

Bucky's finger tightens and the trigger is pulled.

 

-

 

He comes too easily enough, pleasant warmth breathed between his shoulder blades and hands wrapped around his chest, clinging despite looking anything but.

Bucky waits for a moment and takes a breath.

"I'm sorry."

Steve's answer is automatic and even if he's not facing the blonde, knows that his eyes are probably shaded with a sadness Bucky is surely responsible for.

"Nothing to apologize for."

He's wrong and Bucky lets a small sigh fall from his mouth, brings his hands to grip muscled arms and squeeze. They sit in the silence, no one speaking but a thousand words flooding each of their head's, hoping to be whispered into the other's mouth, neck, skull, body, _anywhere_. Bucky feels safe and pulled into a soft kind of comfort, a special sort of relief and peace that should be reserved for newborns, miracles just brought into this world.

"What if..."

Arms tighten, a persistent nose continues to nuzzle into his back, a mouth forms the words he knows are coming but dreads them anyhow.

"I'd've followed."

Bucky's eyes burn and liquid flows forward, easily and like a lid finally broken after years of pressure.

"Don't you fucking say that," He hiccups, cries ugly and distorted, but Steve doesn't shift. "Don't you ever say that to me again, Rogers. You hear me?"

He's gasping over nothing and his voice cracks at every syllable.

"Don't you ever fucking say that, you fucking hear me?" He repeats, his throat on fire, not used to this kind of fear gripping his heart. "Goddamn you, Steve Rogers. You stupid fucking punk. I hate you, I _hate_ you so fucking much, you know that, huh?"

He's sobbing louder than a toddler after his first scrape, screaming and clutching onto the arms across his chest like they're the only things chaining him down, tethering Bucky to this life.

"I fucking hate you! I hate you, I hate you, _I hate you._ "

He hears crying, not his own hysterics but quiet gasps into his spine, wetness slipping down his back.

Bucky's voice breaks over and over but he doesn't _care_.

"I hate you, Steve Rogers. I do. I hate every bone in your goddamn body. I hate your hands, I hate your stupid fucking pride and sense of right and wrong, I hate that fucking body of yours, I hate your heart, I hate you for what you've done to me, and I hate those _goddamn_ eyes."

Steve doesn't talk, only nods along fervently, crying and drowned out by Bucky's screaming and snarling, his own tears like lava down his face.

He fights out of those arms, breaks free and turns, grabs that fucking face, looks into those eyes and kisses those lips.

He kisses hard and harder still, desperate and weak, breaking down further and now only capable of whimpering pathetically against Steve's lips.

"I hate you." He whispers, mouth contorted to release shaky sobs. Steve breathing out heartfelt agreements against his lips, their tears mixing and faces messy displays of emotion gone awry. "I hate how much I fucking love you, you fucking idiot. _It hurts_. You have no idea how much it hurts, Steve."

Bucky cradles that face, that perfect face and releases broken whines by the minute, trying to muffle them against Steve's lips, wanting nothing more than for Steve to swallow them all so they're never heard again. His hands grasp frantically at locks made of sunshine and feeling like silk against his callused fingers. Bucky presses his whole body against that physique that could inspire a whole new wave of paintings and marble statues. He wants to spit more lies, to try and cover up the helplessness he feels, the urgency to make Steve _see_.

Steve breathes, a quick intake and blurts out with no grace, just raw feeling.

"I love you Bucky, I love you more than anything in this world," He pants, not giving his lungs the time to take in enough oxygen, pushing out all the words as if he'll never get another chance. "I can't lose you again, I can't. I'm a selfish bastard but I _need_ you, God Buck, I do."

They're both just mumbling now, pleading and coming together like two halves to a puzzle that's long been solved, just forgotten for awhile and covered in dust. It's all jittery, hands continuously skating over wounds and shoulders, measuring cords of muscle and smooth columns of throats. They're mapping and gripping and trying to just ground themselves in the present, the full events of moments ago sizzling and shaking them down to their roots. Roots tangled up in each other, raised from the same dirt and grown by the same city.

Bucky surfaces a couple minutes later, after an aggressive plastering of his form to Steve's, face buried in that neck and counting the breaths gliding across the shell of his ear. He only moves a little closer, causing a wave of small movements. A shuffled leg, a tightening of an arm, smooth metal recalibrating quietly, and a soft sigh escapes his mouth when Steve whispers his name like a prayer and plants a kiss just below his lobe.

Things aren't solved, won't magically be okay, Bucky knows.

Steve gives a small sigh, content, despite sitting upon unstable foundation that still needs to be looked over, changed, helped. However, Bucky's eyes only flutter shut, curls his body further into the chest encasing a heart that whispers verbal sugar, makes sure to curl his fist around those golden hairs at the nape of Steve's neck and tugs softly. He gets a slight groan for his efforts and an even tighter squeeze, those arms feeling as if they're the only forces keeping Bucky together.

They're not fixed, not any healthier human beings then when Steve walked in, not yet anyhow.

But this?

"This is all I need." Bucky mumbles, pressing a kiss to a pulse that jumps to meet his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for the shitty ending.
> 
> P.S. I have a real bad habit of having one or the other bury their face between the other's shoulder blades, I just find it so personal and intimate. (A close second being kisses to the wrist...I know I'm weird)
> 
> Now it's time to get ready for work running on no sleep, thanks insomnia.
> 
> Good Morning/Night, sweethearts.


End file.
